Film Updates

We've been working hard behind the scenes in moving our projects forward and I wanted to share what's going on. I also wanted to share my thoughts on what's going to be necessary for indie films moving forward especially in a challenging environment that we're currently in.

First an update on our projects:

Silver: Currently going through another small rewrite. We're super excited where we're at with this one. We have Joshua Michael Stern(director of Jobs), Nat Wolff, and Andrea Londo already all attached.

We also attached Luz Films a few months ago who will be producing with us. They won Sundance last year and they're a team we've wanted to work with for a long time.

After this rewrite we will be sending out for the mom role in the script trying to attach a big name. We have a list of about 5 actors. This will be huge for the film. It's also going out in September to investors so these next few months will be an exciting time. We're hoping to be shooting in Q2 of 2026.

Wildcards: This is our indie tv series. It was called Love/All initially but we've changed the name. With Love/all which was a proof of concept we did really well getting into Dances With Films and now the New York Latino Film Festival in September. It also did over 40k views and the trailer did over 75k views.

The pilot has been completely rewritten and we're really happy where it's at.

Our next steps with this one is putting it on Wefunder where we'll be raising additional financing.

Overall I'm super excited about this one since it's set in the tennis world which is the world I grew up in as well as Jeremy and Andrea who are co-creating.

I also believe that indie tv series is still a blue ocean, unlike indie film. It's an area not that many people are doing yet because they believe it's riskier than film. I don't think that's the case.

It's budget wise not much more than an indie film because if you do a show of 6 episodes of 25 minutes it's really the same as a two and half hour film. 6 episodes is the minimum needed for international sales as well.

Since I'm working in sales and distribution it's important that we have it in a format that is sellable to everyone. And that's what we're doing.

I also like that a tv series has more revenue potential. Not only can it be licensed to streamers but it can much easier be relicensed. Unlike indie films. Indie films are nearly impossible to sell again after the first initial sale. TV series on the other hand there's not a time limit on.

Not only that, even on VOD it makes more money. If an indie film rents out on Amazon for let's say $4.99, a series might rent for $1.99 per episode. So six could be around $12.

I also think it's easier for many more people to take a chance on it. A full film is an hour and a half commitment whereas they can rent an episode and just watch 25 minutes. Low commitment and more likely to try it out.

Lastly because the show is set in the tennis world and the way it's set up it's much more marketable than a film. We can target tennis audiences specifically which is a huge and passionate niche. We can work with tennis influencers. And tennis people in general are very passionate about anything around tennis. Which we'll tap into.

This is very exciting for us. Mark Duplass did something similar with an indie series he made, Penelope, which he self financed and then ended up licensing to Netflix. I believe we're still in the early goings of indie tv and I like that we're coming into this at the perfect time.

Marketing:

This brings me to indie film and the importance of marketing. I think in the current climate without filmmakers getting either a bigger distributor that puts a good sized budget into marketing their film or marketing themselves, it's going to be very hard for an indie film to get seen very much.

We're currently working on the marketing of a film releasing theatrically end of August. For that we created with my team over 120 pieces of content. These are all made and in a Google drive. We did this over 2 months.

This means we have a ton of content to start putting out towards the release in a couple weeks which we'll be doing. I think this is the only way to give a film a good chance.

There's too many filmmakers and distributors only posting 2-3 times and that's it. That's not nearly enough. Especially with how the algorithm works with these platforms.

That's why you need a lot of content. I recommend if you're doing this yourself which many indie filmmakers are doing, that you spend a couple of weekends way before your release to create content.

And don't be perfectionistic about it. You don't know what's going to hit, quantity is more important in this case. Yes to trailers and little scene clips. But also stills, behind the scenes, even informal videos where you're talking to the camera what this film means to you. What you had to do to make it. Some things that were tough. What you enjoyed. The inspiration. There's so many topics you could talk about.

And get others involved. Have your cast do some videos too. Why they love this role. What drew them to the story. Same for the DP. You can create so much informal content just from everyone that worked on the film.

That's what you want. You want the audience not just invested in the film. You want them invested in you and your team. That's the only advantage you have over big budget companies. You have a face and personality. They can get invested into people.

That's a big differentiator and the main one you have. Lean into that.

You almost can't run out of ideas. As long as you remember it's not about creating a perfect piece of content. Don't waste your time on one piece that takes hours. Create multiple pieces and variations of the same thing so you have quantity.

Then schedule it in your Instagram daily. You can do all the scheduling in one day. You want to keep this simple so you don't spend all your time on this. Batching it and scheduling it all is the best way to do it.

These are just some of my ideas on marketing. I hope it helps.

I'll update you soon on the campaigns we're starting so I can share step by step what worked and didn't work.

Thanks for reading!

Keep creating,

Greg